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Monkey causes giant Kenyan blackout

Posted: 7:42 PM, Jun 08, 2016

Updated:2016-06-09 12:13:19Z

By:
Justin Boggs

A monkey was able to cause a giant power outage as most of Kenya was without service for part of Tuesday. A monkey stumbled into the Gitaru Dam Power Plant, knocking out power for 15 minutes across the nation.

According to KenGen Power, the monkey climbed onto the roof of the power plant, and dropped onto a transformer. The result was for power to drop in the transformer, causing power to dip enough to blackout the entire nation.

"KenGen power installations are secured by electric fencing which keeps away marauding wild animals," the company said in a statement. "We regret this isolated incident and the company is looking at ways of further enhancing security at all our power plants."

Nearly 4.7 million customers were affected by the outage. Power was restored within 15 minutes to much of the nation.

The East African nation is still struggling with providing access to electricity nationwide. Only 23 percent of the population has electricity access at home, according to The World Bank.